Posted by Rebecca on Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:37:11 EDT (68.76.87.171)
The following poem by Jawdat Fakhreddine appeared in Issue No. 16 of the Marlboro Review.
How Long This Day of Mine
Is it shameful
For one to outlive his friends?
Do the dead see, once they have settled
There in their death
What they dropped at the side of the road
Where they left us?
I wonder,
Do they realize the loneliness of the road
Once they have crossed it?
Do they laugh in their death
At our struggling in the strait they've already passed?
Do they pity us when they look back at where we are?
Do they have joy in their hearts, that they have made it?
How beautiful death would be,
If the dead were to look back at the loneliness of the road
Once they have settled.
Every day that passes,
I look behind me,
I find it calm, composed
And free,
Staring at me with pity, without boredom
or loneliness.
That is how the day passes upon me
It survives
And hands me coldly to another.
Am I now in another?
That is how the day passes without me
And clears behind me.
How short life is,
And how long this day of mine!